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Agility@Scale: Strategies for Scaling Agile Software Development

Scott is a Senior Consulting Partner of Scott W. Ambler and Associates, working with organizations around the world to help them to improve their software processes. He provides training, coaching, and mentoring in disciplined agile and lean strategies at both the project and organizational level. He is the founder of the Agile Modeling (AM), Agile Data (AD), Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD), and Enterprise Unified Process (EUP) methodologies. Scott is the (co-)author of 19 books, including Disciplined Agile Delivery, Refactoring Databases, Agile Modeling, Agile Database Techniques, The Object Primer 3rd Edition, and The Enterprise Unified Process. Scott is a senior contributing editor with Dr. Dobb's Journal and his company home page is ScottWAmbler.com

Agility@Scale: Strategies for Scaling Agile Software Development

I recently did the voice over for our Rational.Everyware Agility@Scale whiteboard video, which is a bit less than 4 minutes in length. As I narrate a whiteboard sketch evolves, sometimes using sticky-notes and index cards, to help explain what I'm talking about.

In the video, I describe:

The history of agile

Some of the challenges surrounding traditional development

Some of the basics of agile, such as increased collaboration with stakeholders and on delivery of consumable solutions

The benefits of agile, including increased quality, time to value, stakeholder satisfaction, and ROI

I'm happy to announce that I've accepted the role of Managing Director of the Scrum Alliance (SA), a part-time position in addition to my duties here at IBM. On the surface this must appear to be a radical and unpredictable departure for me, considering my history of being critical when it comes to some of the past activities of the Scrum Alliance. To be fair, I've actually been critical of the Certified Scrum Master (CSM) scheme, and rightfully so. But I have also actively embraced the good ideas contained in Scrum and have incorporated them, with attribution, in my writings about Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) and other agile topics. I believe that I've made this very apparent in this blog and in other sources such as the Agile Modeling site. So, it really isn't such a radical departure for me afterall, although still arguably one that was difficult to predict. In fact, one of the reasons why the Scrum Alliance approached me to be Managing Director is the fact that I have been critical of many of the Scrum community's behaviors.

So, over the next few months you're going to see what I believe to be some welcome changes at the Scrum Alliance. Our first step at serving you better will be to apply agile strategies and principles in the way that we work. Importantly, we'll be taking a three pronged strategy based on respect, clarity, and integrity. We have dubbed this strategy "Scrum Alliance 2.0".

Respecting people

To be more respectful of existing and potential SA members, we will begin executing the following activities:

Adopt respectful language on the site. We've begun a review of the SA web site to identify potentially disrespectful language. For example, on the About page we indicate that Scrum trainers pay for your first two years of SA membership fees. Who do we think we're kidding? Those fees are clearly coming out of the money that you paid to take the training and we shouldn't hide this fact. I believe that our improved clarity strategy, see below, will go a long way to increasing our respectfulness towards others.

Tone down the rhetoric. There's been a lot of rhetoric espoused over the years regarding Scrum, which is true of many other issues within the IT industry and not just Scrum. From now on any rhetoric that we do promote we're going to actually live by. For example, not only are we going to claim that Scrum increases visibility (which it can in fact do) we're going to be an examplar of that by being open ourselves. More on this below.

Deprecate the chicken and pig analogy. Calling people chickens and pigs may be fun at first, and to be fair the analogy helps to cut through some of the politics surrounding many project teams, but the terminology is in fact disrespectful. We can and should do better.

Clarity through openness and honesty

We are also starting to execute on four activities for improving the clarity of how we operate:

Be crystal clear about what "not-for-profit" actually means. This is a wonderfully deceptive term from the US tax system which can make organizations appear far more virtuous than they actually are, which is particularly easy in situations where the audience doesn't have a sophisticated knowledge of finance. Not that I'm implying anything. Although we have taken some steps to explain the implications of what being a "not-for-profit" organization means, we could do a lot more by being less self-serving. Yes, the SA isn't a for-profit organization. The implication of this being that we need to spend the money we rake in, but it doesn't imply that as individuals we can't make a lot of money via our SA work. I'm not taking on the position of Managing Director for free after all, and I'm sure that previous MDs have found the position lucrative.

Publish our salaries. To live the high standards which we espouse through our rhetoric, we're going to be very clear about the way that we operate. This includes publishing the salaries of the employees of the SA and the revenue derived from Scrum training of all of our certified trainers. Part of being respectful to our membership is to be clear about how we spend their hard-earned money.

Publish how we spend the rest of the money. After we pay ourselves, how much do we really spend on supporting user groups, education, and research as we claim? Don't you think you deserve to know? I certainly do, which is why we're going to ensure our finances are no longer opaque. With tens of thousands of members and/or "certified masters" running around out there, it's pretty clear that we making a lot of money. To guarantee that money is being spent appropriately we're going to share with our membership where it's coming from and going to.

Publish our meeting minutes. This will be both in written form, e.g. traditional meeting minutes, as well as recorded form (ideally video but at least audio). The only way that our membership can be assured that we're working in an ethical and integral manner is through complete visibility into our operations.

The fundamental idea here is that the Scrum Alliance should have nothing to hide from our membership. We've preached open and honest communication for years, now we're going to start actually living by those words. Yes, it may be a bit painful to work to this level of clarity, but we feel that you deserve this.

Integrity through actions, not words

Finally, we're taking three actions to increase the overall integrity of the Scrum community:

Increase investment in research. Although we've big claims about support Scrum research over the years, very little has actually come of this due to lack of funding (see discussion of salaries above) which can be seen in the serious lack of research results posted at the SA site. Of the six publications at the site tagged as research results, three were performed by Carnigie Mellon University, the home of the Software Engineering Institute, producers of the CMMI. Although I personally respect the work surrounding the CMMI, not that I agree with all of it, I'm concerned about relying on CMU for half of our Scrum research results. We can and should do a lot better, and the first step is to divert some funds away from our own pockets into research. Having actual empirical results, as opposed to espousing rhetoric about empiricism, will go a long way towards more respectful behavior via actual fact-based discussions. Until then, you may find my IT Survey Results page to be a valuable resource.

Deprecate the Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) certification. Although I would prefer to end this embarrassment immediately, we need to be respectful of the fact that CSM courses have been scheduled several months in advance and some people have already paid for seats in them. So, as of June 30th 2011 the CSM certification will be deprecated. This should give our Certified Scrum Trainers time to rework their business models and focus on more respectable activities.

Existing CSMs must clarify the certification. People who have previously "earned" the CSM designation will be grandfathered in until December 21st, 2012 in accordance with the Mayan Calendar. However, until that time all CSMs who choose to indicate their designation publicly (many CSMs choose not to) in email signatures, business cards and so on must now use the following wording - "Certified ScrumMaster (earned by staying awake during a two/three day training course)". This wording reflects our new desire for clear and open communication as well as for being respectful. Far too many people are fooled by the terms "certified" and "master" and we're going to do our best to reduce this problem through greater clarity.

As I hope you have guessed by now this blog is an April Fool's joke. I have no intention of becoming the Managing Director of the Scrum Alliance and my condolences go out to anyone who would take on this position. This blog posting does however reflect what I would do to bring greater clarity, integrity, and respect to the Scrum community. The Scrum Alliance can and should choose to do a lot better. I hope it has been food for thought.